Electric propulsion vehicles such as battery, plug-in hybrid battery, and other hybrid electric vehicles, require advanced battery systems that have high energy storage capacity, while also delivering reasonable battery life and cost. Lithium-ion batteries are a favoured technology solution due to their superior energy storage, relatively light weight, and high power density. But, when operating at the requisite high power density and close packed cell configurations, these batteries produce considerable and unevenly distributed waste heat, which can limit battery efficiency, energy storage capacity, safety, reliability and life. New battery thermal management solutions including battery cooling heat exchangers, are of increasing interest and application to maintain control over the operating temperature of these batteries, and thus to optimize battery performance and lifecycle.
Although a range of battery pack configurations and heat exchanger solutions exist, planar arrays of battery cells are commonly employed; and these may be preferentially cooled by liquid-cooled plate heat exchangers that are interspaced between individual cells. Close thermal contact between the plate heat exchangers and the battery cells, is used to conduct heat in the direction required to limit and modulate the battery operating temperature.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,851,080 describes a battery cooling plate design with discrete channels. The '080 Patent discloses battery cooling plates having wide channels that are subject to deformation during assembly line vacuum and fill processes due to insufficient strength of the channels. This '080 patent also discloses new art to improve this and other requirements for battery coolers.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,044,207 describes a heat exchange module, where two metal sheets welded along weld lines defining between them a group of channels disposed side by side substantially in a common plane, intended to be passed through by an exchange fluid and, from the fluidic point of view, being in parallel with each other between two connection orifices of the module. The group of channels has a generally U-shape configuration, which connects together the said connection orifices that are laterally separated from each other.
US Patent Publication Application No. 2008-0090123 discloses a fuel cell stack having a sealing structure for sealing gasses and cooling water. The sealing structure is also electrically insulative. The fuel cell stack includes O-ring beds that are combined to the gas flow plates and through which liquid flow holes cooling water passes, gaskets that surround the gas flow plate to prevent the leakage of the gasses, and O-rings that surround the flow channels of the cooling plates and the O-ring beds to prevent the leakage of the cooling water.
There is a need in the art for improved battery cell coolers that offer compact, thin, inter-cell placed cooling solutions, including liquid cooled plate coolers that are supplied with coolant from a common manifold. Such new improved battery coolers need to provide desired cell-contact heat transfer capabilities without incurring coolant-side pressure drops that may be too high for the automotive cooling system, while also providing flow channels having sufficient strength so that they do not deform during assembly line vacuum and coolant fill process.
Similar reference numerals may have been used in different figures to denote similar components.